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Chapter 37: Techniques to Witness the Flux-like Film of Life

Because Adam disobeyed he was thrown out of heaven, and the revenge seems so long. And Christians say Jesus was crucified just to redeem us - to redeem us from that sin that Adam committed. So the whole Christian concept of history hangs on two persons - Adam and Jesus. Adam committed the sin, and Jesus suffered to redeem us from it and allowed himself to be crucified. He suffered so that Adam’s sin may be forgiven. But it doesn’t seem that God has forgiven yet. Jesus was crucified, but humanity goes on suffering in the same way.

The very concept of God as a father is ugly, serious. The Indian concept is not of a creator. God is just a player; he is not serious. This is just a game. Rules are there, but rules of a game. You need not be serious about them. Nothing is sin - only error, and you suffer because of error, not because God punishes you. You suffer because of the rules you don’t follow. God is not punishing you. The whole concept of leela gives life a dramatic color; it becomes a long drama. And this technique is based on this concept:

This so-called universe appears as a juggling, a picture show. To be happy, look upon it so.

If you are unhappy, you have taken it too seriously. And don’t try to find any way how to be happy. Just change your attitude. You cannot be happy with a serious mind. With a festive mind, you can be happy. Take this whole life as a myth, as a story. It is one, but once you take it this way you will not be unhappy. Unhappiness comes out of too much seriousness. Try for seven days; for seven days remember only one thing - that the whole world is just a drama - and you will not be the same again. Just for seven days! You are not going to lose much because you don’t have anything to lose.

You can try it. For seven days take everything as a drama, just as a show. These seven days will give you many glimpses of your buddha nature, of your inner purity. And once you have the glimpse you cannot be the same again. You will be happy, and you cannot conceive of what type of happiness can happen to you because you have not known any happiness. You have known only degrees of unhappiness: sometimes you were more unhappy, sometimes less unhappy, and when you were less unhappy you called it happiness. You don’t know what happiness is because you cannot know. When you have a concept of the world in which you are taking it very seriously, you cannot know what happiness is. Happiness happens only when you are grounded in this attitude, that the world is just a play.

So try this, and do everything in a very festive way, celebrating, doing an “act” - not a real thing. If you are a husband, play, be a play husband; if you are a wife, be a play wife. Make it just a game. And there are rules, of course; any game to be played needs rules. Marriage is a rule and divorce is a rule, but don’t be serious about them. They are rules, and one rule begets another. Divorce is bad; because marriage is bad: one rule begets another! But don’t take them seriously, and then look how the quality of your life immediately changes.